


Oil and Water

by nonagesimus



Category: Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas (2003)
Genre: M/M, They're In Love Folks, this movie was built for pining fanfiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-07
Updated: 2020-06-07
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:07:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,341
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24585832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nonagesimus/pseuds/nonagesimus
Summary: Proteus and Sinbad, on the cusp of adulthood together.
Relationships: Proteus/Sinbad (Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 78





	Oil and Water

Proteus’s day is rigidly structured, to a degree: breakfast, lessons, more lessons, luncheon, even more lessons, a two-hour break for sparring if he’s lucky, perhaps the opportunity to sit in and observe one of his father’s council meetings at some point, supper, then—and _only_ then, and only _sometimes_ —a wide expanse of delicious free time before bed. Each day, he has a schedule planned out; each day, he knows precisely what to expect.

Of course, each day Sinbad saunters in and methodically ruins every one of his plans, but that’s another predictable event he can rely upon, too.

At seventeen, he’s old enough that most of his tutors have been dismissed—he’s trusted to instruct himself. He’ll sit for long stretches in the huge royal library, bent over a smoothly-polished wooden table, one hand slowly turning the pages of a dusty tome—today, it’s _The Laws and Practices of the Twelve Cities_ , and he’s carefully studying the chapter on property law. It’s fascinating stuff to him—certain other boys his age mock him for his vested interest in dust-coated topics like politics and legislation, but he’ll never tire of burying himself in knowledge about his city and his people.

His head is resting in his free hand, thumb stroking his chin absently as he frowns in concentration. He doesn’t notice the boy strolling up to him—Sinbad can be quiet when he wants to be, and, at Proteus’s insistence, he’s also got free run of the palace, though not ungrudgingly on King Dymas’ part. Proteus also doesn’t notice the warm, profoundly fond look Sinbad is giving him—although that’s the point; if Proteus was able to notice it, Sinbad wouldn’t be giving it.

Sinbad makes a soft “ahem” noise, announcing himself, and Proteus looks up in surprise. “Sinbad!” A warm and genuine smile spreads across his face; Proteus is never anything less than glad to see his best friend (except, rarely, when they had last parted on bad terms). 

“Y’know,” says Sinbad conversationally, “I could’ve slit your throat and you still wouldn’t have noticed I was even standing here before you bled out.”

“Charming introduction.” Proteus rolls his eyes and casts his gaze back down at his reading. “No one is particularly eager to slit my throat nowadays. I think I’m safe.”

“Hey, you’re the prince of Syracuse. You’ve got enemies. You gotta be careful.”

“As I see it, you’re my only enemy,” says Proteus lightly, turning the page.

“Me!” Sinbad clutches his chest, wounded. “I’m your best friend!”

“You’re certainly the enemy of my _studies_ ,” Proteus murmurs, not looking up from the book he’s pretending to read. “I never get any work done when you’re around distracting me.”

“Maybe that’s a good thing. Get your head out of that book for five minutes. We’re going out.”

Proteus looks up at Sinbad, who is waggling his eyebrows in a vaguely suggestive way. “Out,” he repeats skeptically.

“Out! You remember the outdoors? Sunshine? Fresh air?”

“I was outside just this morning,” Proteus protests.

“Yeah, well, you’re going again. C’mon.” Sinbad comes over and grabs onto Proteus’s wrist, dragging him to his feet; the legs of his wooden chair scrape along the marble floor. Proteus pretends not to notice certain things, but that doesn’t make said things any less unspeakably intense. The way that every point of pressure from Sinbad’s hand on his wrist causes invisible sparks to surge up into his nerves, the way he can feel everything more acutely when Sinbad is there, and especially when Sinbad is _touching_ him. The way there’s stupid heat on his face, a redness he can feel, that he hopes to the gods Sinbad doesn’t notice.

Luckily, Proteus is very good at hiding things, keeping things quiet and subtle and inaccessible to anyone but himself: he schools himself into neutrality and lets out an annoyed laugh as Sinbad drags him along, through the library with its massive arches overhead and towards the exit to the outdoors. “I would much appreciate if you’d tell me where you’re abducting me to.”

“Outside! From there, you’ll see.”

Proteus groans but lets his friend take him out, from the palace library into the royal gardens just outside. In the dying mid-afternoon light, golden and splayed in shadow across both their faces through the softly waving leaves of the olive trees above, Sinbad looks different than he does inside: his smile wider, his baggy, patched-together red clothes brighter in colour, his tousled dark hair more lustrous. The sun does him favours. Proteus tries not to stare, as he’s been doing for years. (He doesn’t know that Sinbad is trying not to stare, too.)

“Well, we’re outside,” says Proteus dryly. “What’s this grand adventure?”

“Ha ha. Smartass. C’mon. I’ve got a plan, and you’re gonna help me with it.” (His tone brokers no argument.) And Sinbad, blessedly, mercifully, doesn’t let go of Proteus’s arm, keeps that delicious, humming-with-energy contact of their skin as he drags Proteus along out of the royal gardens, down to the city.

A few hours later, they’ve climbed a building with flimsy ropes attached to makeshift grappling-hooks, stolen a moderately valuable amethyst necklace (well, _Sinbad_ stole the necklace while Proteus kept lookout in various stages of panic), spent 45 minutes haggling its price with a shady-looking salesman on Syracuse’s most run-down street corner, departed very smugly with fifteen gold crowns, and bought themselves a late lunch.

“This is what you do,” Proteus says to Sinbad. “You corrupt me. You do your best to get this city’s prince arrested. And for what?”

“For fun,” Sinbad replies cheerily, muffled through a mouthful of bread and cheese. “You know what fun is, right?”

“Allegedly. But not _your_ brand of fun.”

“Mmm. Too bad. My brand’s the only brand.”

They’re sitting on the cobblestone street together, leaning against the cool stone of a building behind them. Each of them has a hunk of bread and some hard cheese to eat: much less sophisticated fare than Proteus is used to at the palace, but with Sinbad, this is as gourmet as gourmet gets. They watch people go by; people, to a much lesser degree, watch them back. It’s not an uncommon sight, to see the king’s only son, all dressed in regal blue-and-gold, traipsing around with that common thief boy, Sinbad. Everyone knows they’re best friends. How could you miss it? They’re together every moment that Proteus isn’t studying or sleeping; they practically have each other’s names branded on their skin. _Mine_.

“Saw your father earlier,” says Sinbad casually, and takes another wolfish bite from his bread.

“Hmm? And where was that?” Proteus is a little on-edge at the mention of Dymas. The king and Sinbad mix about as well as oil and water; Dymas only very reluctantly allows Sinbad near Proteus at all, given the amount of times the former has landed the latter, by association, in trouble. (As prince and street-thief, Proteus and Sinbad should mix as well as oil and water, too. But evidently, they’ve reinvented the laws of physics and created their own little world.)

“I was taking a shortcut through the palace to find you. Y’know. As I do.”

“As you do,” echoes Proteus with heavy sarcasm. The last time Sinbad _took a shortcut through the palace,_ he tracked fresh mud all across the immaculate floors and earned the ire of every servant and diplomat in the building. Proteus didn’t hear the end of it for days. That was just last week.

“And I happened to run into Dymas,” Sinbad plows on. “And he and I…” Here, hurt seeps into Sinbad’s voice, as much as he’s clearly trying to suppress it. “We had a chat.”

Proteus glances over at his best friend. Sinbad is, very studiously, not looking at him. “And what did you talk about?” he ventures carefully, though he can already guess.

“Oh, y’know,” says Sinbad, falsely breezy. “I said _good afternoon your majesty_ ; he said _if you ever do anything to hurt my son’s reputation again I’ll have you hung_ ; we exchanged pleasantries; the end.”

Proteus blinks, in surprise and then in fury. “He— _hung_? He really said that?”

“In his defense,” says Sinbad flatly, “I think it was a long time coming.”

It’s true: Dymas has, at least beyond furious looks and vague threats, not made his resentment for Sinbad _this_ clear until now. But Proteus knew that certain things were being bottled up.

Still. Anger and protectiveness, surprising in their vehemence, swell inside him: he’s going to have a long and very firm talk with his father when he returns home. “I would think he’d be a little more tactful,” says Proteus tightly, as usual keeping himself well-controlled.

“Yeah, well. I guess tact gets thrown out the window when your son’s hanging out with a godless street kid.”

The breadth of Sinbad’s hurt isn’t easy to gauge, not unless you know him very well—which Proteus does. It’s all in the cadence, the pitch and timbre of his voice, how it’s suddenly so forcibly relaxed and devil-may-care, but in a way that sounds false and damaged to the ears of anyone who knows better.

Hesitantly, the prince reaches out and puts a hand on Sinbad’s shoulder, lightly. Sinbad doesn’t shrug it off, but he doesn’t tear his eyes away from the hunk of bread and cheese in his hands, either.

“You…might wanna listen to him,” says Sinbad, letting out a sigh like he’s been deflated, a popped bubble. “I mean. You’re a prince. Hanging around with me isn’t exactly doing you any favours. Right?”

Proteus gives his friend a small but heartfelt smile; ah, yes, he can read Sinbad like a book when he needs to. All around them, Syracuse is alive, thrumming: people bustling by on the streets, friendly calls from the windows above, the distant cries of gulls, and further away the rush of the ocean. Proteus’s city: and, as one of its citizens, Sinbad is his, in a way, too. And in more ways than that, he sometimes thinks.

He tightens, ever so slightly, his hand on Sinbad’s shoulder. A squeeze, one which he hopes communicates caring and trust. “I’m not going anywhere,” he says, with solemnity that surprises even him.

Sinbad looks at him, now. “You promise?” he says, open and raw. “I mean, I did take you along on a heist today. A _heist_.”

“It was hardly a _heist_ ,” Proteus says warmly. “It was barely a pilferage.”

“No, it was a heist! There were ropes and everything.”

“A heist, then,” Proteus allows, “and yes, I could’ve gotten in trouble, and yes, it would’ve been your fault, but…” He hesitates, unsure of how to verbalize how he justifies spending time with Sinbad. “…it would’ve been worth it,” he says lamely. “It always is.”

(He would’ve been spared any punishment worse than a slap on the wrist, courtesy of his father, and he would’ve made sure Sinbad was spared the worst, too. He would’ve fought tooth and nail for Sinbad. And he knows Sinbad, in any situation where he could, would do the same for him.)

Sinbad gives him a lopsided half-smile, all sharp and mischievous, and for a second Proteus is all focused on that mouth, wants to feel it under his own, and he forgets how to breathe: and yes, _this_ is why he’d fight tooth and nail, although he hasn’t mustered up the courage yet to admit to himself what _this_ means.

“I’m a bad influence on you,” Sinbad says, very gravely, though with that enchanting smile. “You know that, right?”

“Maybe I’m a _good_ influence,” Proteus counters, gaining his voice back from where Sinbad’s smile stole it. (This is how he justifies everything: accompanying Sinbad on illegal ventures, even though he vehemently disapproves and makes sure Sinbad knows it. Proteus loves the law and, in word at least, hates lawbreakers—but Sinbad is the exception, where he can turn a blind eye and, to an extent, justify certain things. It has always been this way.)

Proteus’s hand is still rested on Sinbad’s shoulder. It would be so easy to cup the other boy’s face, take hold of his chin, angle their faces together and press mouth on mouth and kiss him absolutely senseless—

Well. There’s a dangerous thought, though not an unfamiliar one, and he pushes it away steadfastly. Proteus is engaged in all but name, a fact he has never told Sinbad, a fact he doesn’t intend to tell Sinbad for a long time. The girl with whom he’s exchanging letters, Marina—he’s half in love with her too, but for now, she is just words on a page. She’s not _present_ like Sinbad, she’s not real flesh and blood and staring him in the face and inviting him on dangerous adventures and trading banter with him and sparring with him and giving him that infuriating, godsforsaken, _gorgeous_ smile.

Still. He’s engaged.

Proteus removes his hand.

They stroll together through the streets of Syracuse. It’s low light, and Proteus is missing supper, but he’s seventeen—his time is his own to waste, and he’s not expected at the dinner table the way he was as a child. Unless there’s some sort of official royal function going on, which there isn’t tonight. (Proteus keeps a meticulous schedule. He _knows_ when things are going on, so well that Sinbad often teases him about it.)

“You remember when we first met?” Sinbad asks suddenly.

“The fight? Oh, yes, I remember. I seem to recall saving your pathetic behind,” says Proteus thoughtfully.

Sinbad punches him hard in the arm, which Proteus clutches, wincing and laughing in the same breath. “Ow! Gods!”

“ _I_ seem to recall,” says Sinbad, glowering, “that it was a _joint_ effort. But that’s not what I wanna talk about.”

“Do continue, O Strong One,” Proteus groans, still nursing his smarting arm.

“You remember…” Sinbad hesitates, begins to walk slower, so that Proteus has to slow himself to keep pace. Proteus looks over at him; the other boy, again, won’t meet his eye, instead looking straight forward down the road. “How we fought together like we were _born_ for it,” Sinbad continues, suddenly fierce. “How you didn’t even know me, and I didn’t know you, but we were like…trained dancers, together. Knowing each other’s moves before we even made them. You remember that.”

“Yes,” says Proteus quietly, becoming conscious that wherever Sinbad is going with this, it’s somehow a serious thing. “I remember it.”

Sinbad is quiet a long moment, then: “That’s what Dymas is never gonna understand. About us.”

The prince takes a long, deep breath, calculating his response: he’s unsure of where to even begin. “You’re right,” he says. “But… to be fair, you’ll never understand how my father cares about me, either.”

Sinbad doesn’t say anything to that, just makes a dismissive noise and kicks hard at a pebble on the ground, which goes skittering away down the road.

“Sinbad,” says Proteus firmly, “listen.”

“I’m listening,” says Sinbad, but resentfully.

“You think I don’t understand what you’re trying to say. But I do.” Proteus wheels around, getting in front of Sinbad and stopping him with a hand on his shoulder. It’s abruptly very, very important that Proteus should make Sinbad understand. “In his own way, you see, my father is trying to protect me. And honestly, maybe he does know best. Maybe I should listen to him. But I won’t, because—because you’re as important to me as he is. It’s like the gods are forcing me to choose between two aspects of myself—two worlds. The side that’s royal, that’s meant to behave a certain way and perform a certain role, and the other side, the side that wants to be _with you_.”

The words tumble out in a rush, getting faster as he speaks them, because he’s feeling too many things right now: love for his father for wanting to protect him, but anger and hurt at his father for threatening Sinbad, and confusion and a sharp strange tug in his heart, because he knows he’s in love with Sinbad, ferociously so, and he doesn’t want to give this feeling a name. Not yet. Not ever. But also, he _does_ , desperately. Wants to name it and shout it in the streets for every citizen of Syracuse to hear: _I love this boy, and I’m supposed to care that he’s a thief and that he’s no good, but I don’t care, because he’s_ mine.

Things inside Proteus’s heart are a jumbled mess right now. It’s too complicated for him to parse, and a part of him just wants to run back to the palace, bury himself in law and politics, lose himself to a world much bigger than him, and forget his own personal troubles—forget that he’s a person at all. But Sinbad won’t let him. Sinbad, who always grounds him and brings him down to Earth, abruptly grabs him by the collar of his shirt and yanks him into a nearby alleyway between buildings, where it’s dark all around them.

From what Proteus can see of Sinbad, there’s a change in his eyes: something odd and infinite has kindled in them, an expression Proteus can’t even try to name. “Y’know,” he says—and there’s something very dangerous in the utter nonchalance in his voice—“I really am no good for you. You’ve known that, for, what, seven years? And you keep coming back.”

Their faces are far too close together, their bodies too: the thinnest layer of air separates them, their clothes brushing against each other, Sinbad’s breath ghosting on his face. Proteus tries to muster annoyance and indignance; it won’t come, only a surge of breathless butterflies. “Why?” says Sinbad, and Proteus can hear that this question is very important to Sinbad.

“Because,” Proteus says, shocked at how even his voice manages to be. “Like you said a moment ago. From the second we met, we fit, you and I. We both know it. I couldn’t leave you if I tried. And besides, if I did, _gods_ , my life would be so boring.”

A moment of silence that seems to span eons. Proteus tries to keep his breathing steady.

He notices Sinbad is looking at his mouth, not his eyes. Surely he must be imagining it—but he’s not. And Sinbad looks so hungry, and so fiercely in love—but surely Proteus must be imagining that, too.

He must also be imagining the way Sinbad is leaning in, slowly, by degrees—so close that Proteus can feel Sinbad’s sharp hot exhale on his lips, which he unconsciously parts in anticipation. Sinbad’s hands are still holding his collar, looser now, but a constant pressure, a reminder.

It would be so easy to kiss him and just forget everything for a while: that he’s a prince, that his father has any control over his life, that there’s a girl in Thrace waiting for his next letter—forget everything that isn’t Sinbad’s mouth on his own.

At the last moment, princely instincts take over: _duty, propriety, Father, Syracuse; can’t, not now, not ever_. Proteus withdraws, gently but insistently. Whatever he was imagining Sinbad was going to do, it’s over now; the moment breaks. The pressure leaves Proteus’s collar, Sinbad’s hands falling to his sides.

The dark-haired boy claps Proteus on the shoulder, an unmistakably platonic gesture; his smile is genuine and holds no hint of disappointment, of whatever energy was possessing them both a moment ago. “You’re my best friend,” Sinbad says. “And you’re damn right your life would be boring without me. C’mon—I know the best place for a party this time of night.”

And Sinbad swaggers off, back into the dying light of the street. With a sigh, Proteus lingers just a moment before following in his friend’s wake, preparing a stream of protests and excuses that, as both of them know, will amount to nothing in the end—because, as both of them also know, Proteus would follow Sinbad just about anywhere. And vice versa.

**Author's Note:**

> https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/707377959014498305/719075712354484234/hem_is.png


End file.
